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Christopher Smart's Madness
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
Few lyric poems of the eighteenth century have aroused as much interest during the past fifty years as Christopher Smart's Song to David. Poets, critics, and scholars have lavished praises upon it ever since Browning so liberally commended it in his Parleyings. It appears—usually only in part—in nearly all the anthologies, and in England the entire text has several times been separately reprinted. So much attention to the poem has led inevitably to a desire for more knowledge about the poet, and various scholars have attempted to satisfy this desire. Nearly all, however, have been baffled by the complications of the poet's periods of insanity, or else have jumped to conclusions that will not fit the facts. The late Sir Edmund Gosse, by the beauty and urbanity of his appreciation of Smart's poetic genius, in Gossip in a Library in 1891, did much to rehabilitate him in the world of letters. Unfortunately, Sir Edmund was seriously wrong in many of his most essential statements concerning the poet's life, and his misconceptions and misinterpretations of the facts have served as the basis of nearly all subsequent accounts, including that by Thomas Seccombe in the Dictionary of National Biography.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright
- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1930
References
1 Gosse had before, on 4 June 1887, published in the Athenœum the main points of his contentions.
2 Tovey, Letters of Gray, i, 213.
3 The Athenœum, 4 June 1887; Gossip in a Library, 151–161; The Works of Thomas Gray, ii, 215.
4 Notes and Queries, 10th Series, iii, 221.
6 The proof lies in a list of Smart's periods of residence at Pembroke Hall, compiled by Mr. A. L. Attwater of Pembroke College who has been good enough to give me a copy. It is based on readings of the Butler's Sizing Book preserved in the Treasury of Pembroke; only recently has the system of entries been understood. It proves that Smart was never in residence after 8 June 1749. (I omit from the list the years 1739 to 1746, since they do not concern us here.)
1746–47. Week beginning 26 Sept., to middle of week ending 16 July 1747 (sick, 26 June to 2 July, or absent for part of that week).
1747–48 and 1749. In residence from week beginning 23 Oct. 1747 until middle of week ending 8 June 1749, with these absences: (a) Middle of week beginning 13 Nov. 1747 to 31 Dec. 1747. (b) Middle of week begining 10 Feb. 1748–9 until middle of week ending 2 March 1748–9. (c) Half of the week beginning 17 March 1748–9.
6 In the introduction to Smart's collected Poems, 1791.
7 Smart's Poems, 1791, i, xx.
8 Boswell's Life of Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill (New York, 1891), i, 354.
9 Poems (Reason and Imagination), 1763, 18. The poem is not reprinted in the collected edition.
10 In the first part of 1756 there appeared his prose translation of Horace, his Hymn to the Supreme Being, and his Seatonian Prize Poem On the Goodness of the Supreme Being. The reviews of these in the various periodicals establish the fact that they were published before June.
11 It has, however, often been supposed by writers on Smart that he was at large at the time of the benefit (3 February 1759). The evidence for such a supposition rests entirely upon an interpretation of the two following extracts from letters, and is far from being conclusive: first, Gray to Mason, 18 January 1759, (Tovey's Letters of Thomas Gray, ii, 70–71). “ .... Poor Smart is not dead, as was said, and Merope is acted for his benefit this week, with a new farce, The Guardian.” Second, Mason to Gray, 25 January 1759, (Tovey, ii, 77–78). “.... This resuscitation of poor Smart pains me; I was in hopes he was safe in that state where the best of us will be better than we are, and the worst I hope as little worse as infinite justice can permit. But is he returned to his senses? If so I fear that will be more terrible still. Pray, if you can dispose of a guinea so as it will in any sort benefit him (for it is too late for a ticket) give it for me .....” Gray, writing from London, says nothing of Smart being free, and Mason, replying from York, could have known nothing about the matter.
12 These poems are by A[rthur] M[urphy], (Public Advertiser, 3 February 1759); William Woty (reprinted in his Shrubs of Parnassus, 1760); and Richard Rolt (reprinted in his Select Pieces, 1772).
13 A variety show which Smart, in an attempt to improve his finances, had given in London taverns (and finally in the Little Theatre in the Haymarket) at various times from 1751 to 1753.
14 The Preface, which is signed “Mary Midnight,” one of Smart's easily recognizable pseudonyms, is “To the Right Honourable Lady Caroline Seymour,” and concludes with these words: “ .... and if the Value of any Present is enhanced in Proportion to the good Intent of the Donor, you cannot receive a greater than this New-Year's Gift.” Mother Midnight's Orations is an extremely rare book; so far as I can ascertain, the copy in the British Museum is unique.
15 Tinker, Letters of James Boswell, i, 39.
16 Smart's Poems (1791), i, xxii.
17 Ibid., i, xxiii-xxvi.
18 i, 320.
19 Smart is often spoken of by his contemporaries as having been at Bedlam, and he very well may have been confined there, but the mere use of the term “Bedlam” by Fanny Burney and others does not necessarily prove this. In the eighteenth century the name was used indiscriminately for any mad-house, just as it is today. E. G. O'Donoghue in his Story of Bethlehem Hospital states that there is no evidence that Smart was ever an inmate of that institution, though he warns us that the records are sparse and incomplete.
20 A. R. Ellis's Early Diary of Frances Burney (1913), i, 28; i, 66.
21 Smart's Poems (1791), i, xxiii.
22 “It would be cruel, however, to insist on the slight defects and singularities of this piece for many reasons; and more especially, if it be true, as we are informed, that it was written when the author was denied the use of pen, ink, and paper, and was obliged to indent the lines, with the end of a key, upon the wainscot.” Monthly Review, April 1763, 320.
23 The precise date is recorded in advertisements in the Public Advertiser, 7, 8, and 9 April 1763.
24 Boswell's Life of Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill (New York, 1891), i, 459.